Reality Drama on the high Seas

December 06, 2006
By Alice Keesing

Hawaii's legendary Hokulea voyaging canoe opened a new world last month for a team of young sailors destined for the silver screen and the oldest blue water yacht race in the world. At first glance it was like polar opposites colliding: the hell-bent sail racing world and the ancient, contemplative voyaging tradition. Yet when the two came together they quickly found the same underlying human spirit that drives them all. The Morning Light crew has been assembled by Roy E. Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney. An avid and successful sailor himself, Disney has caught upon the idea of putting together the youngest crew ever to attempt the Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Hawaii. It's a gutsy event, a mad, hard dash across 2,225 nautical miles of open ocean. Grueling, to say the least. To add to the drama, cameras are following the crew every step of the way, putting together a documentary feature film that is reaching for popular success a la March of the Penguins. It's already been dubbed reality drama on the high seas. More than 500 young sailors from around the country applied for the project, including local boy Mark Towill, who has made it down to the final 15. "What a great kid," says Disney of the 18-year-old Towill. "He is just a terrific young man. We had been hoping all along that we could find somebody from here so we were looking through all the applications and Mark's name just kept popping up." A Punahou senior, Towill got hooked on the water when he was 8. Since then he's been racing small boats on the national level, taking his open ocean kayak across the Molokai Channel and paddling outriggers more than 400 miles along the leeward coast of the Main Hawaiian Islands. And it was through Towill that the Disney project and the Hokulea came together. Towill has known Thompson and been sailing on the Hokulea since small-kid times - he credits the navigator as a major influence in his life. After he was chosen for the Morning Light crew, his family hosted a dinner to which both Disney and Thompson were invited - and the two sailors got talking. "I listened to (Roy Disney) talking about his love for the sea and his passion for sailing and trying to use the experiences he can create to help young people grow through the challenges," Thompson says. "Even though we're from different parts of the world and from different sailing cultures, ultimately what we're trying to do is the same." Thompson offered to take the Morning Light crew on board the Hokulea to introduce them to Hawaii and the values for which the Hokulea stands. Disney - who has been coming to Hawaii since there were just two hotels on Waikiki Beach and who surfed with Duke Kahanamoku - jumped at the opportunity for what he's called a "mystical" experience. "We still find our way using a lot of the same data, and it's good to know where all this stuff comes from," Disney says. "It's like you have a cell phone but you don't know that it used to be tied into the wall with a cord for a long time - you really need to understand your roots." The day after Thanksgiving, as the Morning Light crew helped rigged the Hokulea at its birth off Sand Island, Genny Tulloch eyed the ropes and the wooden decks and the ochre red sails. This canoe is nothing like the speed platforms she is used to sailing. "Some of the basics are the same," she says, then laughs, "The very basics." Unlike most of her crew-mates, 22-year-old Tulloch was already familiar with the story of the Hokulea. She was honored to be on board and looking forward to learning about sailing without instruments. "On race boats you live by numbers," she says. "So to sail by feel, being guided by the sun and stars and telltale signs like the birds ... it's nice to get this before we get into that numbers crunch." During the TransPac, the Morning Light crew will sail its carbon fiber racing machine hard through night and day for a good week, standing watch and sleeping for just a few hours at a time. It's an exhausting but exhilarating experience. For Jesse Fielding, the race is all about adventure. "I wanted to the do the Transpac because in the last couple of years I've felt a need to get out, to break free and go, for adventure," he says. "I don't know if there's any greater sense of adventure than this." For Towill, it's also a voyage of self-discovery. "I've always thought it would be an extremely powerful or life-changing experience to sail home and in some way replicate that (voyaging mission) of pulling the island out of the sea," Towill says, referring to the way that Polynesian navigators see the canoe as stationary, then turn it in the direction of the destination and bring the island to the canoe. The Morning Light crew members - whose average age will be 21.2 years when the race begins in July - are politely optimistic about their prospects. After all, they all point out, look at the team behind them. They're being trained by Olympic gold medalist Robbie Haines and navigator Stan Honey, who is fresh from winning the Volvo Ocean Race. Disney himself has won the Transpac in record-setting time and, by the way, he's returning from retirement to race again this year after someone beat that record. But it's not all about the finish line. Disney is just as interested in the human drama that will surely unfold onboard the Morning Light. Ever since the nail-biting selection process, the team has been tagged by movie cameras. None of them is an actor, there is no script, and many of them admit to feeling rather self-conscious with the attention. They come from all over the country and from all different backgrounds. And Disney is sitting back and watching them come together. And that may be the strongest thread between these two sailing worlds. Whether they're racing fast boats or voyaging across the Pacific, they're joined by a passion for the sea and the idea of people coming together, people striving, pushing, working to make things better. Towill hopes that the time spent with the Hokulea will show the team how to come together. "I hope it teaches us that we need to come together as more than just friends, as more than just crewmembers, but as a family so we can be successful," he says. And after spending two days on the double-hulled canoe, Kate Theisen says the crew gained a personal connection with the islands. "By having this kind of connection, it's like Hawaii becomes like home to us," she says. "So when we're racing, instead of it just being a race, it's like we're going home."